It may well be that the key skill in all
long-term committed relationships is conflict management--certainly the
data on marriages suggest this is true (Gottman
1994). The presence of
conflict does not determine the quality of a marriage; rather, how the
couple handles conflict situations determines the quality of the
relationship (Comstock and Strzyzewski 1990). Even beliefs about conflict
are more important to marital, happiness than whether or not the two
partners actually agree with one another (Crohan 1992).

How you handle conflict spreads to other
members of your family. For example, it has been noted that adult children
who are taking care of their parents usually have high levels of conflict
with siblings (Merrill 1996). Learning effective skills for dealing with
your younger brother or sister is far better than engaging in a family
dispute that will affect your children and subsequent generations as well.

Immediate
impact of unresolved conflict. Unresolved conflict has tremendous
negative impact. It directly affects the parties themselves--the two vice
presidents are so absorbed with their conflict that they cannot carry out
their normal job duties. In relationships, unresolved conflict leads to
drifting away from one another and sometimes jettisoning the relationship
entirely. One study even found that the relapse of compulsive gamblers was
related to erupting interpersonal conflicts (Lorenz
1989).

Family research is quite clear about the
systemwide effects of destructive marital conflict. First, negative
conflict between the parents reduces the family's network of friends and
creates more loneliness (Jones 1992). Second, conflict between the parents
tends to both change the mood of household interactions and also to shift
the parents' attention to the negative behaviors of their children (Jouriles
and Farris 1992). For example, inter-parental conflict leads to fathers
issuing confusing and threatening commands to their sons (Jouriles
and Farris 1992). Third, parental conflict has direct negative impacts on the
children (Comstock and Strzyzewski 1990). Conflict between parents
predicts well-being of the children, with more conflict associated with
maladaptive behavior on the part of the kids (Dunn
and Tucker 1993; Garber 1991; Grych
and Fincham 1990; Jouriles, Bourg,
and Farris 1991). For
example, children of conflicting parents see conflict as aggressive and
have behavior problems and lower academic performance (Buehler et al.
1994). Families with delinquent teenagers are found to be more defensive
and less supportive than families without delinquents (Prager
1991).
Finally, the effects of destructive conflict patterns suggest that
"ongoing conflict at home has a greater impact on adolescent distress
and symptoms than does parental divorce" (Jaycox
and Repetti 1993,
344).

There is evidence that parents who
either avoid conflict or engage in negative cycles of mutual damage
directly influence the children's subsequent lives. For instance, if your
parents avoided conflict, you may be at risk in romantic relationships (Martin
1990). A modest relationship exists between mothers who avoid
conflict and their daughters' marital satisfaction (VanLear
1992). On the
other end of the continuum, children who are exposed to harsh discipline
practices at home (which coincide with a negative and hostile relationship
between the parents) are more at risk for aggression, hyperactivity, and
internalizing by withdrawing, having somatic complaints, and experiencing
depressive symptoms (Jaycox and Repetti 1993). The family effects also
reach beyond the immediate environment. One study demonstrated that
children from high-conflict homes had much stronger negative reactions
while watching a video of angry adults than children from low-conflict
homes (El-Sheikh 1994).

Children's own favorableness toward
marriage is directly affected by the conflict between their parents. If
their parents have frequent conflict, the children have a much less
favorable attitude toward marriage (Jennings, Salts, and Smith
1991). A
child's general feelings of self-worth are directly affected by
interparental conflict (Garber 1991). Finally, it has been fairly well
demonstrated that parental conflict has long-term effects on children
regardless of family structure (Garber 1991). This means that it isn't
primarily the question of whether parents divorce or not that affects the
kids but it is the level of conflict present in either the intact family
or the restructured family that impacts the children.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher.William W. Wilmot and Joyce L. Hocker, Interpersonal
Conflict, 5th edition (copyright 1998 by The
McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.). McGraw-Hill and the CIOS site author make no
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